Synopsis Upon beginning his fourth year at
Hogwarts, teenaged wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is mysteriously
selected to participate in the potentially deadly Triwizard Tournament against
another student from his own school, a young woman from a magic school in
France, and a brutish young man from a third such school in Bulgaria. While
doing so, Harry is forced to remain alert, as Voldemort, the evil sorcerer who
murdered his parents, appears to be on the verge of returning.

Analysis I greatly enjoyed all three of the previous
Harry Potter movies and I had fun watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of
Fire as well. Sadly, although it is an entertaining film, Mike Newell's
contribution to the series is, by far, the weakest of the four.

One element that made the earlier movies especially enjoyable
and which is conspicuously absent here is the camaraderie shared by Harry and
his two best friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). Although
both of these supporting characters are present, the latter plays such an
insignificant role that she could easily have been lifted from the movie
without affecting it and the former appears only to have a petulant, forced,
and quickly forgotten spat with Harry. Neither is given much of an opportunity
to contribute to the narrative.

The movie's other characters are no better employed by the
director than are these two, however. Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) shows up to
give speeches that explain plot points to the viewer. Snape (Alan Rickman)
makes a very brief cameo to pointlessly threaten Harry, and Professor
McGonagall (Maggie Smith) does nothing more than give a dancing lesson and lend
her face to crowd scenes. Even Harry's supposed new love interest, Cho Chang
(Katie Leung), is wasted. The character appears only to smile at Harry from a
distance a couple of times and to have one extremely short conversation with
him. She is allotted so little screen time, in fact, that the viewer is never
able to feel Harry's infatuation for the girl, which really is a shame.

What is more, the world in which these persons live is as
diminished and shallow as they are. The director has, for instance, done away
with nearly all the details of Harry's life at his school and reveals little of
the protagonist's classes, of his concerns about his grades, or of his
interactions with his teachers and fellow students. Nonetheless, with its
pervasive celebrations of British customs and eccentricities and its
stereotyped presentations of people from other lands, Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire certainly has the most uniquely British feel of any film of
the series. Luckily, by playing on trends found in the United States and in the
United Kingdom, namely, many Americans' wide-eyed but somewhat blind
captivation with and idealization of other cultures and many Britons'
provincial infatuation with their own culture and insecure fear of those of
others, this quality will, undoubtedly, appeal to countless persons on either
side of the Atlantic. There is, however, an irksome superficiality and grating
falsity to this approach, as there always is in idealizations, and this is sure
to bother some viewers. What is worse, the director's depiction of the
Bulgarian students as rough, militaristic oafs and his dressing of Voldemort's
followers, the Death Eaters, in black robes and pointed caps, like Spanish
penitentes, tinges the movie with a vague but distracting xenophobia.

Because of the predominance of such flawed qualities, other than
presenting the various deadly events of the Triwizard Tournament, the movie
really has almost no individuality, very little narrative, and even less
emotional impact. The director has reduced the occasionally wonderfully
exaggerated, often charmingly delineated, and always engaging characters of the
first three movies into automatons performing a variety of stunts. He has
erased any sort of dramatic trajectory from the story he tells, and, by doing
so, he has allowed what anxiety he does arouse, which is mostly produced by the
hints he gives about the eminent reappearance of Voldemort, to fizzle out. In
fact, rather than bringing his narrative to a satisfying conclusion, Newell
just stops it, leaving the viewer feeling as though he has watched a chapter in
a larger work instead of a complete whole.

That said, the film's action sequences are usually very well
done and truly exciting. The moviegoer is sure to be thrilled with the sight of
Harry being chased through the air by a fire breathing dragon, of his dive into
the depths of the sea, where he encounters a school of less than friendly
mermaids, and of his duel with the hideously deformed Voldemort in the middle
of a graveyard. Moreover, not only are all of these sequences suffused with a
rousing sense of adventure, but they also have a magical quality that
consistently adds to their appeal.

Whatever its shortcomings, Harry Potter and the Goblet of
Fire is a fun film to watch. It does give the viewer the chance to savor an
almost non-stop excitement. Unfortunately, it provides little else in addition
to its thrills.